Shoulders The hill is a hard pillow in the morning, knotty pine piercing my mammoth nape, reality needling into daydreams. Truth is, nobody loves a giant. Rising like a countryside eclipse my shadow blocks the day from the city below, a tranquil din dominated by car horns and ignorance. Scuttle turns to silence as my feet hit city pavement, hot, old boots like houses in the rhyme of a Mother Goose childhood. Screams, age old fear, setting small people on edge with their bullet-shaped spears and pitchforked prejudice – uneducated. Enlightenment comes with thunder, bouldered fists lifting my unlearned cousins, beyond their ken to my shoulders – tense and empty fields. Birdlike, perched, glory laid bare, they curse me and their miniature world of plastic and rubber and small dreams. The sky holds blueprints of castles and immortality, my gifts, in awesome terror seized – when tiny shaking fingers finally touch clouds.
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Nolan Liebert hails from the Black Hills of South Dakota where he lives with his wife and children in a house that is not a covered wagon. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Gone Lawn, ExFic, The Harpoon Review, An Alphabet of Embers, and other publications. He can be found on Twitter @nliebert.
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